Bartolo Colon Leaves Mets; Agrees to a Deal With the Braves

Late in January 2006, Bartolo Colon received the plaque for the American League Cy Young Award. At the time, the Dominican-born Colon was 32 and playing for the Los Angeles Angels, and the man who presented the award to him was Juan Marichal, the first Dominican player to be selected to baseball’s Hall of Fame.

Marichal ended his major league career in 1975 with 243 victories, the most to this day among pitchers from the Dominican Republic. The only Latino pitcher with more wins than Marichal is Dennis Martinez, a Nicaraguan who finished his career with 245.

Soon enough, Colon may surpass them both — but he will not do it as a member of the Mets. On Friday, Colon’s three-year tenure with the club ended when he agreed to a one-year deal with the Atlanta Braves for the 2017 season, according to a person in baseball with direct knowledge of the situation who requested anonymity because the deal is not yet official.

The agreement, pending a physical, will be worth $12.5 million, according to Fox Sports, an eye-opening number for a pitcher who is 43 years old and carries 285 pounds on a 5-foot-11 frame.

The older, and perhaps the heavier, Colon gets, the more he defies logic. With the Mets, he had three solid seasons in which he rarely missed a start and won 15 games, then 14 and then 15 again. And he did so with a pedestrian 88-mile-per-hour fastball that cut and dipped and generally allowed him to outwit opposing hitters.

Now, as he heads to Atlanta, Colon has 233 career wins, putting him within reach of Marichal and Martinez. Can an athlete who, these days, does not even look like an athlete still end up with the most victories by any Latino pitcher? It appears likely.

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When Colon hit a home run against the Padres on May 7, he became the oldest player in major league history at the time of his first home run.CreditDenis Poroy/Getty Images

“All the records that I can reach are important,” Colon said in Spanish late in his 2016 season with the Mets. “I’m always chasing after myself and pushing myself.”

For Dominican baseball players, Marichal is a significant figure. He was one of the first Dominicans to play in the major leagues and, as a star with the San Francisco Giants, helped pave the way for others. Colon, who lives about 90 minutes from Marichal’s home in the Dominican Republic, said that while growing up, he had not known much about Marichal other than his intense competitiveness. He said that becoming the Dominican pitcher with the most wins would mean a lot to him.

Colon’s 2017 season will be his 20th in the majors, setting the record for longevity among Dominican-born pitchers. His 500 starts are already tops; Marichal made 457. Colon said late last season that the 2017 season could very well be his last. He has pitched 3,172⅓ career innings and may not surpass Marichal’s 3,507.

But if Colon has another season like 2016 — 15-8 record, 3.43 earned run average and an All-Star selection — he could surely set the victory mark.

“I hope that he stays as healthy and strong as possible so that he can be the one recognized as the winningest of all Latin America,” said the Hall of Fame pitcher Pedro Martinez, who is also Dominican.

Martinez finished his 18-year career with 219 wins; injuries hampered him late in his career.

Colon, too, has sustained shoulder and elbow injuries over the course of his two decades in the majors, and he was suspended for 50 games in 2012 for using performance-enhancing drugs. But over time, he has evolved from a hard thrower to a crafty pitcher, and it is anyone’s guess how long he might keep going.

“Even though you see him as chubby, he uses his physical abilities in his favor and works hard,” Martinez said, speaking in Spanish.

The Mets wanted to keep Colon around for 2017 because of the mentoring he has provided to younger teammates and the security he would offer for a starting rotation that is highly talented but prone to injuries.

But money was clearly a concern. The Mets paid Colon $7.5 million in 2016, and as they try to find a way to keep Yoenis Cespedes in Queens with a new, expensive free-agent deal, any significant money spent elsewhere — such as on Colon — could affect that effort.

As a result, the Mets knew that Colon might land a better deal elsewhere amid an overall scarcity of reliable starting pitching, and his departure is not a surprise.

With Colon gone, the Mets still have seven starters for 2017, at least on paper. That group is led by Noah Syndergaard, who managed to stay relatively healthy last season. Behind him are Jacob deGrom, Matt Harvey, Steven Matz and Zack Wheeler, all of whom are expected to be ready for spring training after dealing with injuries and, in some cases, surgery in 2016.

The Mets can also look to Robert Gsellman and Seth Lugo, two unheralded minor leaguers called up last season who were crucial to the team’s successful late-season bid for a wild-card spot.

Still, Colon’s veteran presence will be missed. As will his adventures at the plate, where his sometimes zany at-bats helped make him a folk hero to Mets fans and were worth at least half the price of admission.

In all, he managed to get 15 hits as a Met, the most memorable being the home run he hit May 7 in San Diego. That shot made him the oldest player in major league history to hit his first home run.

With the Braves, a rebuilding team, Colon will join R. A. Dickey, a 42-year-old knuckleballer who won the 2012 Cy Young Award with the Mets, moved on to Toronto and signed a one-year deal with Atlanta on Thursday. Together, they will make the Braves more interesting, particularly if Colon can chase down Marichal and Dennis Martinez.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page D2 of the New York edition with the headline: Colon, After 3 Seasons With Mets, Agrees to Join Braves. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe